Bolthouse Farms is offering workers a $500 bonus to get vaccinated against the coronavirus and is doing other things to make procedure as easy as possible.
The fresh-produce company has secured doses of COVID vaccine and has set up on-site shots at its main facility in Kern County, Calif. CEO Jeff Dunn told the Wall Street Journal that Bolthouse’s goal is to achieve herd immunity as quickly as possible, so that some of the distancing and other procedures adopted during the pandemic can be dismantled. Bolthouse estimates that 1,300 to 1,400 employees, out of its total plant workforce of 1,800, would have to either get vaccinated or achieve immunity through infection for that to happen.
One of the challenges involved in companies that have multistate operations is that the rules and priorities for vaccinations differ from location to location. Another challenge for companies with heavily Latino workforces – Bolthouse’s is more than 80% Latino – is that many Latinos are reluctant to get the vaccine.
About 1,100 Bolthouse employees have signed up for the vaccine, and about 475 have received at least one shot, the Journal reports.
